Transnistria (World War II)
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Transnistria, during World War II, was an occupied region of the USSR, under control of Romania during the maximum eastward expansion of the Axis Powers 1941-1944. It included present-day Transnistria and some territories further east, including the Black Sea port of Odessa, which became the capital of this WWII Transnistria.
In World War II, when Romania, aided by Nazi Germany, for the first time in history took control of Transnistria, there was never any attempt to formally annex the occupied territory beyond the Dniester (Romanian: Nistru) River: it was generally considered merely a temporary buffer zone between Greater Romania and the Soviet front line. Transnistria had never been considered part of Bessarabia. Two preeminent political figures of the day, Iuliu Maniu and Constantin Brătianu declared that "the Romanian people will never consent to the continuation of the struggle beyond our national borders."[1]
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[edit] Romanian occupation of Transnistria 1941-1944
Many Jews were deported to Transnistria from Bessarabia and Bukovina. In the total time period 1941–1944, 200,000 Roma people and Jews were victims of the Romanian occupation of Transnistria. [2] Not being Romanian territory, Transnistria was used as a killing field for the extermination of Jews. Survivors say that in comparison with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, where deportations were carefully planned, the Romanian government did not prepare to house thousands of people in Transnistria, where the deportees stayed. The people were instead placed in crude barracks without running water, electricity or latrines. Those who could not walk were simply left to die.
In Odessa, between 80,000 and 90,000 of the city's roughly 180,000 Jews remained at the time the Germans and Romanians captured the city on October 16, 1941. Six days later, a bomb exploded in the Romanian military headquarters in Odessa, prompting a massacre of Jews; many were burned alive.[3] In two months alone, October - November 1941, Romanian troops in Odessa killed about 30,000 Jews.[citation needed] Transnistria was the site of two concentration camps and several de facto ghettos (which the Romanians referred to as "colonies"[3]); most of the surviving Jews in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina wer herded into these as well. The Holocaust Encyclopedia (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) writes that "Among the most notorious of these ghettos… was Bogdanovka, on the west bank of the Bug River… In December 1941, Romanian troops, together with Ukrainian auxiliaries, massacred almost all the Jews in Bogdanovka; shootings continued for more than a week." Similar events occurred at the Domanevka and Akhmetchetkha camps, and (quoting the same source) "typhus-devastated Jews were crowded into the 'colony' in Mogilev." Other camps, also with very high death rates, were at Pechora and Vapniarka, the latter reserved for Jewish political prisoners deported from Romania proper.[3] Many Jews died of exposure, starvation, or disease during the deportations to Transnistria or after arrival. Others were murdered by Romanian or German units, either in Transnistria or after being driven across the Bug River into the German-occupied Ukraine. Most of the Jews who were sent to Transnistria never returned. Only one-third of the initial deportees survived. Those who survived, and returned to Romania in 1945, discovered that they had lost their houses.[4]
Even for the general population, food in Transnistria was very scarce, through lack of Romanian planning. According to one survivor's account, people would gather outside a slaughterhouse and wait for scraps of meat, skin and bones to be thrown out of the slaughterhouse after the cleaning each morning. He remembers that they were fighting for the bones "just like dogs would" and that people were starving to death.[4]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Charles King, The Moldovans (Hoover University Press, 2000).
- ^ (Russian) Юлиус Фишер (Julius Fischer), Транснистрия. Забытое кладбище (Transnistria. Forgotten graveyard), Шоа. Информационно-аналитический портал (Shoa. Information-analysis portal), shoa.com.ua, 20 November 2005. The Holocaust Encyclopedia, USHMM, estimates that 150,000 and 250,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed in Transnistria.
- ^ a b c USHMM
- ^ a b Kathryn Nelson, "The miracle of survival", Minnesota Daily, December 7, 2006.
[edit] External links
- Rumania in World War II, 1939-1945, World History at KMLA. Accessed 8 Jan 2006.
- (Russian) I. Altman Глава 3 Гетто и Лагеря на Территории СССР ("Chapter 3: Ghettoes and Camps on the territory of the USSR") in "Холокост и Еврейское Сопротивление на Оккупированной Территории СССР" ("Holocaust and Jewish Resistance in the Occupied Territory of the USSR"). TOC. Originally on history.pedclub.ru/shoa; archived on the Internet Archive 21 October 2004; page is encoded in Win-1251.
- Romania, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed online 19 December 2006
- Alexander Dallin - Odessa, 1941-1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory Under Foreign Rule
